If your website isn’t optimised and performing well on mobile, there isn’t much point showing ads to mobile users in the first place. The simple fact is, without an optimised website and landing pages, you’re setting yourself up for some poor campaign performance by targeting mobile users.

So today’s Quick Tip kind of breaks the rules in terms of best practices. But you’ll only be wasting money on clicks for the sake of a higher bounce rate and lower conversions by showing ads to mobile users before you’re fully optimised. And, if that sounds like your site, then here’s how to stop that happening.

How to exclude mobile traffic from your ads

To exclude mobile traffic from your ads you’ll want to head to the Settings tab on the main AdWords dashboard and select Devices from the menu just below:

On the next screen you’ll se a table displaying your campaign data, split into three device categories. Find the campaign you want to exclude mobile traffic from and tick the row labelled Mobile devices with full browsers:

After that, click the Set mobile bid adjustment button above the table and set your bid adjustment to Decrease by and type in 100%. This will set all your bids for mobile devices to zero and rule you out of those auctions.

Excluding adsenseformobileapps.com from your placements list

If you’re using display ads, but you’re not optimised for mobile, you’ll also want to go ahead and remove adsenseformobileapps.com from your list of placements. In fact, you may even decide to do this anyway, as we find a lot clicks from within apps are accidental and conversion rates can be low – a call you’ll have to make.

To exclude any site from your placements list, click the Display Network tab and then Placements from the menu below:

Scroll to the bottom of that page and you’ll see a bright red + EXCLUSIONS button, which you can go ahead and click:

On the next screen you’ll want to click the Choose button under Campaign exclusions and select the campaign you want to add your exclusion to. Next you need to click Add campaign exclusions and select Placements from the drop-down list:

Now type “adsenseformobileapps.com” into the box that pops up, click Add placements and then hit the Save button. Done!

Okay, so that’s how you can exclude mobile traffic from any of your AdWords campaigns. Of course, we’d always recommend optimising for mobile and trying to make the most of conversions across all devices. But, if that’s not an option for you at this stage, there’s no point wasting money on clicks from mobile users – and now you don’t need to.